The "TTBL Player of the Month February": Kirill Gerassimenko from Werder Bremen
TTBL fans had the opportunity to vote for their "TTBL Player of the Month February" in a social media survey. This month's candidates were Simon Gauzy (TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen), Kay Stumper (Borussia Düsseldorf), Kirill Gerassimenko (SV Werder Bremen) and Patrick Franziska (1. FC Saarbrücken TT). The TTBL fans voted the Kazakh Kirill Gerassimenko from former champions Werder Bremen, who excelled at the Team World Championships in Busan, South Korea, as "Player of the Month" by a wide margin.
The German World Cup players couldn't find a way to beat him, he even outclassed China's world champion - and only failed again against "oldie" Timo Boll of all people: Kirill Gerassimenko left his mark on February both in the Bundesliga in Werder Bremen's jersey and at the World Cup in Busan/South Korea.
It was no coincidence that the TTBL social media community voted for the 27-year-old this time in their regular Player of the Month poll. The vote for the Kazakh, who is almost a fixture in the Oberhau in his seventh consecutive year in the Bundesliga, was not unexpected - Gerassimenko's World Championship fireworks alone were too outstanding.
In any case, the right-hander has been riding a wave of success since the beginning of the year. By winning the title at the WTT feeder tournament in Corpus Christi, Texas, in January, Gerassimenko already hinted at great deeds for Busan, but first took the momentum from the USA into the TTBL and celebrated victories in the feeder duel with Steffen Mengel (Post SV Mühlhausen) and the later team runner-up Simon Gauzy (TTF Liebherr Ochsenhausen) in the first half of February as a kind of warm-up for Busan.
In Asia, however, the spectacle specialist, who trained at the Werner Schlager Academy in Schwechat, Austria, achieved a masterpiece before his Kazakh team was knocked out of the intermediate round: with an impressive 9: 0 record, including victories against European champion Dang Qiu and Dimitrij Ovtcharov in the preliminary round match against Germany, Gerassimenko even trumped the score of Chinese world champion and world number one Fan Zhendong (8:0) to take the top spot in the World Championship rankings.
The only fly in the ointment was his failure to qualify for the Olympics: with colleagues all ranked above 200 in the world rankings, the ticket to Paris, for which a quarter-final would have been necessary, was simply out of reach for the de facto lone fighter Gerassimenko despite all his skill.
"I really gave it my all, my hand was so sore at one point. I was wondering how I would have carried on if we had progressed one more round," said Gerassimenko on Bremen's regional portal "buten und binnen" after his return to the Weser about his feat of strength in Busan.
In Bremen, his second TTBL stop after two years at TTC Zugbrücke Grenzau, his February winning streak came to an end on the last day of the month just a few hours before the start of March: Gerassimenko seemed to be able to continue his run against Timo Boll after the first set, before the Düsseldorf player once again proved to be a "fearful opponent": "I've now won against all the top German players, but I'm still missing Timo. He always comes up with something new against me," said Werder's World Championship star to the TV cameras, but immediately revealed his self-confidence, which had been boosted by Busan: "Maybe it will work next time."
Florian Manzke